Jackson Engel*

[Megami†]

Name: Jackson Engel
Gender: Male
Age: 18 [Eighteen]
Grade: 12th [Senior]
School: Southridge High School
Hobbies and Interests: Halo, Half-Life, Doom, F.E.A.R., Resident Evil, many other FPS-games; MMORPGs; music -- in particular, rock.

Appearance: One simple word could describe Jackson Engel's overall appearance - unextraodinary. He has short, brownish-blonde hair that is generally unruly and unkempt. Fragments of black are still mixed in here and there from past dye attempts that didn't go too well. If Jackson ever let his hair grow out, it would stick out in long, curly ringlets. That's precisely why he keeps it clean-cut. His eyebrow is pierced twice, and although he's often chastised by his teachers for leaving the piercings in at school -- and even sent home at times -- he refuses to take them out. His eyes are a dark blue in color, and his nose is somewhat wide. He has a light dusting of acne across his cheeks, though it doesn't particularly stand out. His facial structure isn't particularly extraordinary, and in terms of looks, he could only be described as average. He's recently gotten his laberet pierced, much to the dismay of family members. When it comes to clothing, Jackson is easy to please. He's always got on a band t-shirt featuring some rock band or another, but it's always covered up by the black hoodie he seems to perpetually adorn. His blue jeans are all old and worn -- broken in and ripped from age, not by design -- and the black and white checkered converse that are always on his feet are practically falling apart they're so worn out. He isn't particularly pale, and his physique isn't particularly impressive. He isn't scrawny, but he's by no means built either. He stands about average height, but he always seems a little bit shorter because he's always slouching to one side. Overall, he's not a very attention-grabbing individual, and just seems to blend into the background.

Biography: Jackson Engel lives a completely normal life. At least, now he does. When he was a child, things were very, very different. Back in those days, his father was a bartender and his mother was far too scatterbrained to ever hold down a job for more than a few weeks. They weren't well off by any means, and Jackson's mother's failure to work only sunk them further and further into the hole. His father compensated with their growing debt by turning to alcohol. At first, it was just a few drinks after work to calm his nerves. On the day that Jackson's mother first announced the "good" news -- that there was a baby on the way -- Jackson's father spent his first night down at the bar, drowning his stress and sorrows in a bottle of Crown. That was how it all began. Nine months later, by the time the baby was born, Jackson's dad had become a full-fledged alcoholic. He'd go down to the bar -- usually drunk before he ever showed up for work -- he'd work his shift, and then he'd proceed to drink himself stupid before returning home in a stupor and passing out on the living room couch. Things only escalated from there.

When Jackson was finally born, the Engels found themselves in so much financial debt that Mr. Engel's paycheck just wasn't covering it anymore. It wasn't long before Mr. Engel started taking money out of the bar's cash register. At first, it was a five here, a ten there, but then it just got worse and worse, where every time Mr. Engel worked, the bar lost at least a hundred dollars out of the till. It didn't take long for the bar owners to wise up and begin videotaping the register, effectively catching Mr. Engel redhanded. He was promptly fired, placing the Engel family in an even tighter financial bind. In a fit of drunken rage, Mr. Engel headed back down to the bar on a night he was certain the bar owners would be there. He stood at the back of the bar, impatiently waiting on the owners to emerge from the bar. When they did, Mr. Engel tried to convince them to give him his job back, only things didn't go quite as planned. Instead, he wound up in a fight with the owner of the bar, and in his stupor, beat the owner to within inches of his life, then proceeded to force himself on the man's wife.

When the couple recovered from the assault, they immediately called the police, and because of the surveillance camera located outside the bar door that caught the entire assault on tape, Mr. Engel was promptly sent away to prison. All of a sudden, Mrs. Engel, who had never held a job for more than two or three weeks at a time, found herself husbandless and with a small child. Having a baby didn't change the fact that she couldn't hold a job, and so for the first seven years of Jackson's life, he was bounced between friends, relatives, and babysitters while his mom worked odds-and-ends jobs, coming to and fro at all different hours of the day and night. Despite everything, little Jackson was a good boy. At least, he behaved when he was with the babysitter. When he got home, it was a different story entirely.

Whenever Jackson was with his mother, he'd always want to play. Mrs. Engel, however, was always exhausted from working and never wanted to do anything except lounge around on the couch until it was time to go to bed. At first, Jackson would simply give in and go to his room, but as time went on, Jackson became more and more resilient. When mom wouldn't get up off the couch, he would start being deliberately loud -- turning up the volume as high as it would go on the television, banging pots and pans together, basically doing anything and everything he could to annoy his mother into getting up off the couch and playing with him. It worked for a while, and when it stopped working, Jackson started resorting to more drastic measures. At one point, when he was about nine, he out and out hit his mother in the face when she wouldn't take him to the park to ride his bicycle, and things only got worse from there.

The final straw for Mrs. Engel happened when Jackson was thirteen. As usual, she had been asleep on the couch after getting off work, and Jackson -- who had by then grown to be rather antisocial when it came to dealing with his mother -- was barricaded inside his room. Mrs. Engel was thrown from her slumber by the sound of the fire alarm going off, and immediately, she realized that the house was being engulfed in flames. She rushed to Jackson's room and freed both of them from the burning home, but it was too late for their house. By the time the firemen put out the flames, almost nothing of their belongings was left in the wake. Jackson had been the cause of the fire. He'd been playing with a lighter he'd found when he accidentally lit the sheets of his bed on fire, and things had just escalated from there. Finally, Mrs. Engel had had all that she could take. She couldn't deal with her son anymore, and so she did the only thing that she could -- sent him off to live with relatives.

That was how Jackson wound up in California. He moved in with his aunt and her husband, who desperately wanted children of their own but were unable to have kids. His mother felt that her sister would be a much more nurturing and caring individual than she could be, and she felt that was what Jackson needed to quell his violent spells. It seemed she was right. Under Aunt Julia's watchful supervision, Jackson's behavior seemed to drastically improve. Still, Julia worried about him. He didn't have any friends, even after his first few years in school. He spent most of his time at home, playing video games and listening to music. She didn't see the harm in it, so long as he was staying out of trouble, but she wanted her nephew to have friends and a social life. When Jackson was sixteen, she set him up with her best friend's daughter -- a pretty little girl who was on Southridge High's swim team.

Almost immediately, she noticed a change in Jackson's behavior -- except, it was for the worst. He was angry all the time, and he and his girlfriend were always fighting. He became very possessive, almost to the point of borderline obsession. And then there was his girlfriend. She became quiet and withdrawn. She had been a pretty girl naturally, but now she always caked on makeup, and her face always seemed swollen and discolored. Julia couldn't help but think that something was wrong, as did the girl's mother, who forced her to break up with Jackson. The incidents effectively put a wedge in between Aunt Julia and her best friend, and so Jackson returned to his reclusive, anti-social behavior. This time, though, Julia thought it was better that way.

Even now, during his senior year of high school, Jackson doesn't really have any friends. He has a few casual acquaintances that he plays MMORPGs with, but isn't particularly close to any of them. He loves video games, and occassionally talks about how one day, he'd like to make them. His aunt is just glad that he's got some aspirations for his future. He loves music, specifically, rock music, and he's always walking around, jamming to his iPod. He seems to have calmed down quite a bit over the past few years, but every once in a while, she'll have to come pick him up in the middle of the night because he's done something stupid -- Julia figures that's just the way it is with teenagers these days. She and Jackson get along well, though he often disrespects his uncle when he tries to act like a father-figure. Slowly, he seems to be coming out of his shell and stepping out into reality, but only time will tell how well he'll make that transition.

While Julia seems to think that Jackson is slowly coming out of his shell, quite the contrary is true. Jackson still doesn't have any ties with his classmates, but what he knows about them, he doesn't like. He's never been picked on or bullied at all, but for some reason, Jackson harbors a general indifference -- even resentment -- of most of his classmates. He can't stand the stuck-up cheerleader bitches that always seem to be making fun of "guys like him" -- whatever that meant -- and any time he sees a member of the swim team, he cringes, thinking about his former girlfriend. The only people he can seem to tolerate in the entire school are the so-called "nerds", and even then, they were only good as playmates when it came to video games and whatnot. When it came to friends, Jackson didn't need any, and he didn't want any. Graduation was coming up soon, but he hadn't planned on graduating at all. Instead, Jackson had planned on shooting up the entire school the day the class got back from their senior trip. He figured he'd go out with a bang.

Advantages: Jackson is prone to violence, and although he's slowly growing out of it, when he's agitated, he'll still throw himself into a blind fit of rage that could be both a blessing and a curse on his behalf. He's a smart boy, though not the smartest. He's always playing first-person shooters and MMORPGs and he has a fascination with guns and other weapons -- especially swords, knives, and daggers. He's begun a collection of them, and occassionally, when he thinks nobody's watching, he'll get them out and practice with them, acting out fantastical scenes out of his video games. He'd planned on killing all his classmates anyway, so he shouldn't have any qualms about it.

Disadvantages: As stated, Jackson is prone to violence. He's gotten into arguments and even a couple fistfights with his fellow students over trivial matters. He doesn't have many friends, and some people have pegged him as a weirdo or one of those "emo kids", even though he's definitely not either of those. He becomes agitated easily and is prone to bouts of depression and anxiety, so he's definitely not the most emotionally stable individual. He'd have a hard time making allies and an even harder time keeping them, and his personality faults make him a real wild card.